


Please, Mr. Postman

by CopperBeech



Series: Sealed With A Kiss [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Actually Neither Of Them Can Say It, Angst and Feels, Angst and Humor, Aziraphale Loves Crowley But Can't Say it, Crowley Is A Gay Disaster Reptile, Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley is a Mess (Good Omens), Drunk Crowley (Good Omens), Love Letters, M/M, Pining, Snake Crowley (Good Omens), Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unresolved Romantic Tension, not there yet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:30:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25410130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CopperBeech/pseuds/CopperBeech
Summary: Crowley gets weepy drunk, reads some old letters, decides to write one, and finds himself in a... situation. One involving the Royal Mail, the Metropolitan Police, the Daily Mirror,  and the London Zoological Society.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Sealed With A Kiss [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1876633
Comments: 95
Kudos: 193





	Please, Mr. Postman

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [This must be the place](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25339003) by [Laura Shapiro (laurashapiro)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laurashapiro/pseuds/Laura%20Shapiro). 



> T for a few f-bombs only. My last series was like three salvoes from a porn howitzer, so have some angsty romantic pining.
> 
> This is another fic that owes to Laura Shapiro (laurashapiro), this time along with ileolai. Their soft, fluffy, spoony lockdown collaboration, _This Must Be The Place_ , includes a wrenching unsent love letter from Aziraphale, plus Crowley's typical snark when his angel asks if he _got into any trouble_ on the way over: "What sort of trouble do you expect me to get into, violating the two-metre rule with a post box?"
> 
> That became a rude image in my mind, which survived into a fairly G-rated story complete with _Crowley's_ love letter. And the trouble it gets him into with a post box.

Crowley preferred not to think back on the incident with the pillar-box.

The evening had started in a perfectly normal way, with some recreational drinking. Progressed to lovelorn, self-pitying drinking, the kind of session where after a certain point he knew he was going to take out all his pictures and mementoes of Aziraphale, leaf one by one through the letters that he’d preserved over the centuries, miracle his radio to play whatever sad song was popular at the moment, and stumble around the flat in what was meant to be slow dancing with a phantom partner. He was usually teary by that time and would have to pause mid-step to blow his nose loudly.

Eventually, he’d be on the sofa with his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands, sniffling _I’d do anything for you, angel_ and _never felt like I could tell you_ and _know I’m just a demon but I love you more than all those wankers put together._ Then he’d imagine some convulsion of the world that would make it possible for them to go away hand in hand, like a couple at the end of a film, and cry himself to sleep, and feel a right plonker when he woke up, with a crick in his neck and whisky down his shirt, averting his eyes from the scattered treasures as he tidied them one by one back into the rosewood box. They’d stay safe in the top of the kitchen cupboard until he got that drunk again.

Tonight, though, he refilled before he got to the dancing part, sat down with a favourite, well-thumbed screed from 1820:

_Dearest Crowley,_

_I hope this finds you well. I have been detailed to France for a small situation, and must forego our plan to meet at the Opera next Sunday. I have had leisure to think fondly of the last time we met in Paris, and wish we could enjoy that ancient city once again in more peaceful times, should they ever come. It would be a joy to walk with you down the Champs-Elysees._

_Truly, Crowley, I cannot recall an occasion when my heart leapt so wildly as when I saw you in that hideous dungeon. I was sure I was headed for an unpleasant and monstrously inconvenient discorporation. I feel as if I have neglected to tell you that, though we may be on opposite sides, I treasure your friendship always._

_Yours affectionately,_

By the time Aziraphale returned from that trip, brandishing tickets to _Abu Hassan (_ “I know you like the funny ones” _),_ his usual angelic reserve was back in place. Any allusion to the letter was met with ordinary politeness; Crowley’s heart had felt like grinding gears all the way back from Covent Garden.

Now he spread the page out again, looking at the blurred ink where he’d handled it time after time, trying to imagine what the angel had been thinking as he wrote those lines. Just the convention of the times? When everyone was _dear friend_ and _Yr most obdt svt?_ Had he imagined how it would make _Crowley’s_ heart leap?

“Goddammit,” muttered Crowley, a bit redundantly in his case. “I’m gonna write _him_ a letter.”

Actually, this had happened before. Several times before, if he were to admit it. Those times, he’d awakened not just whisky-splashed and red-eyed, but vaguely aware that he’d done something epically stupid the night before; found the letter where he’d left it by the door to post, and vaporized it with a snap of his finger and the strength of his own mortification.

This time Drunk Crowley was going to outsmart Sober Crowley. Other than the letters, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d written much of anything, but he still had some paper in the flat (a temptation back in the Fifties had required personalized stationery, and _Mr. Anthony J. Crowley_ did look rather fine printed above his Mayfair address in raised black script on pale cream). There was even a pen dating from the days when handwriting was graceful. His had never been. Nonetheless, he managed to get through the salutation without blotting: _My beautiful angel._

This was going to call for more whisky. He got it, went back to work, getting decidedly more soppy with each paragraph. This time he was going to pour it all out. How the glance of those cloud-blue eyes had left him wordless on the walls of Eden. How he’d gone decades, _centuries,_ without seeking out Aziraphale because he feared that, this time, he’d be treated just as a demon deserved from an angel. How he’d fled into sleep when that seemed to have actually happened, in St. James’ Park, and dreamed of nothing but Aziraphale – touching him, holding him, saying _I didn’t mean it, Crowley, I love you, I do_ , through all the ages of the world – until Hell sent someone to tell him _wake the fuck up,_ which is what you actually get when you’re a demon.

Better take that last bit out. Fresh page.

The signature vexed him for a moment. _Your devoted? Your loving? Your own? Your_ very _own?_ And, well, Crawly? Crowley? Anthony? Anthony J. Crowley? _The Demon Not Worthy To Sit At Your Feet?_ Definitely a problem for another splash of whisky.

The whisky informed him that this situation required his real name, the one in the antique tongue shared by Hell and Heaven, in a script that no being living on Earth could now read except the angel. He flourished it across the bottom half of the last page. It was a name not to be used lightly, a name full of power, a name that left anything inscribed with it impervious to lesser magics, even some of his own. That would tell Aziraphale he was serious.

Now: to post it. Aziraphale hadn’t spoken to him since handing off the Thermos of holy water; might not read something from him for days, or at all. Make certain he'd at least open the envelope. He settled on addressing it to _Mr. A. Z. Fell, Bookseller_ as if it came from a collector, no return address, and just to be sure (the whisky solemnly advised him), he’d better send it from a different post code than his flat. The night air would clear his head. Possibly.

The streets were as empty as London’s streets ever get, an occasional cab passing, an omnibus on its first (last?) round; as he cut across Hanover Square in the vague direction of Oxford Circus, he realized he’d left his dark glasses back at the flat, but bloody fine, he didn’t want to deal with anyone, he was a sight that’d make the average late-nighter bugger off. They’d be at least as drunk as he was.

And at last, ah, there it was. On the Soho side of Regent Street, just across from the Tube station: a double-entry pillar box (he felt rude recalling that that was the term for it, but aren’t demons supposed to be rude, even lovesick ones?). The first flush of a late spring dawn was already sharpening the outlines of the buildings. He’d go home, have a last splash and sleep as he hadn’t in years, with the weight of all this no longer trapped inside his own chest. Sleep until he was sure Aziraphale had taken in the post.

“Love you so bloody _much,_ angel,” he said – out loud, without meaning to – and bunged the envelope through the slot.

Somehow he was halfway back to his flat. Somehow the dawn sky was three shades lighter and a bracing breeze had come up.

Somehow he was sitting on a bench in Hanover Square, staring down a pigeon with a rather disgusted expression.

Somehow he’d begun to sober a little, and with mounting horror as snapshots of the last few hours flashed through his brain, was saying even more loudly: “ _What the fuck have I DONE?”_

The pigeon pecked at a sandwich wrapper, glared at him with an expression that conveyed Crowley was the biggest wanker in the entire world, and fluttered off a few inches above ground level as if to say not even a pigeon could endure his company.

“I’m fucked,” he explained to the bench.

* * *

As he came back into a blurry sort of focus he realized it was fairly simple. Snap fingers, letter back in hand, burn letter. Just as he always did. He’d sobered up just enough to know he’d had a close call, and for his miracle capacity to come back online (drunk miracles worked, but not always the way they were meant to, and he had a combination blender and hair trimmer back at the flat to show for it). He scrubbed his palms over his eyes, spat out the truly revolting moss that had accumulated on both forks of his tongue, and turned his hand Hellward. _Bring me back that letter._

Nothing.

Buggeration. Must need to concentrate a bit more. He snapped until an accidental gout of Hellfire flew from his fingertips and bubbled the paint on the bench. Smacking it out with his jacket, he decided he’d just have to get closer. Possibly still too drunk to manage at this distance, but quite honestly he wasn't sure he could face this situation entirely sober. Whatever, he needed to _get that letter back_ before one of those picturesque red Royal Mail vans trundled along and sealed his fate.

Early commuters were trickling into the Tube station as he sloped along the pavement towards where the vivid red of the box stood out in all that urban grey. Eyes downcast, no need to scare the morning cuppa out of some working stiff, he sidled up to lounge against the pillar-box, felt in his jacket pocket with one hand as if he were simply hoping to enjoy a quick fag before boarding the Tube, and snapped discreetly.

Nothing.

Not a fucking thing.

Inches and a world away from the instrument of his destruction, Crowley felt every hair on him, even the eyebrows, prickle up with the kind of alarm that’s usually reserved for imminent werewolf attacks or the actual approach of Satan, and that wasn’t a thing he ever cared to experience again if at all possible (Lucifer had gotten even crankier than most leaders of failed revolutions, and you really, really didn’t want to look at the remains of his dinner too closely).

He’d signed it with his real name. The name that made it proof even against his own magic.

His mind raced. Snap the collection door open? There was a chance he’d be rugby-tackled by a passing commuter if anyone noticed him interfering with a post box – the British felt very strongly about their institutions – but desperate times, desperate measures. Only - no fear. There was a faint sense of something giving, as if a less direct attempt at magical recovery set off less resistance; but the box remained stubbornly locked.

He was screwed.

He couldn’t afford to be.

If he was ever to hope for a return to the Arrangement – to genial dinners with Aziraphale, nights at the theater, late boozing sessions when a little maudlin hugginess _might_ pass unnoticed, might slip by under the angel’s radar, he had to get that letter back. Undoubtedly it was the last letter posted at this box, possibly the only one inside, and he knew the feel of that heavy stationery. Discreetly he knelt beside the box, as if he’d dropped his match or his Silk Cut.

No joy. His arms were long and skinny, but there was no winkling his way through the narrow slot where he’d spun the letter, not least because it had a serrated inner lip that reminded him uncomfortably of some things he'd seen during the Inquisition. Well. There was a reason the boxes were made like that.

He leaned on the heels of his hands against the box and frantically cudgeled his woozy brains for ideas. Ideas didn’t come. He was worse than fucked. Aziraphale might inform his own superiors, _I feel I must bring this to your attention_. They might talk to the Dark Council. He might end up as starters. Despair crumpled him and he realized presently that he was folded over the top of the pillar box, head in his crossed arms, intermittently shaking with angry sobs.

_“Oi! Mate!_ Couldn’t find a girl last night?”

Several persons of the young, male, yob persuasion, all but beardless and dressed for what were probably their first jobs, clearly found the speaker witty. Crowley half-straightened, rounded on them, treated them to a full serpent glare.

Well, _that_ was satisfying, he thought as they broke and ran, turning back to lean on the box with his breath coming in heaves that were hard to contain. He’d be in a full-on crying jag in a moment and maybe that was all that was left.

“Young man, what _exactly_ are you doing to that pillar-box?”

Bloody hell, also bollocks and buggery and various swears in Infernal languages. This time it was a no-nonsense woman in a raincoat and a knotted scarf, who seemed to think herself a guardian of the public manners. “If you’ve had too much to drink, you really ought to be – _aaaaaagh!”_

Later he would say to himself that he just snapped. His life was crashing down around him like a bombed building, young hooligans in button-downs had heckled him, a harridan with a lethal-looking handbag was scolding him, and every atom in his body was crying out to burrow somewhere safe and sleep off the rest of his liquor the sad, self-scarifying human way. Before she could finish upbraiding him, in a convulsion of instinct he went full snake right there on the pavement, slithered headfirst into the pillar box and dropped to the bottom, onto a shallow nest of greeting cards and billpayer envelopes, his own letter at the top.

It was a good place for a sulk. He decided to stay a while.

* * *

The Royal Mail arrived around seven AM.

It was interesting to discover that you could be drunk as a snake, and he was still getting the measure of it when the van pulled up. Nearly summer though it might be, the night had been cool, and his serpentine metabolism had ground almost to a halt, so that he was still slightly whiffled when the rattle of the key in the collection door jolted him back to reality. Coiled atop his hoard, he reared his head as light filtered faintly through the heavy canvas, and hissed.

There was the jingling crash of a loaded keyring on the pavement. Crowley hissed again, louder this time and as continuously as he could manage. Which didn’t seem to deter the Royal Mail from lifting the post bag off its hooks, with a mutter of “ ‘ell's this?”, and peering in.

Crowley mustered his direst volume and raised his head, swaying in a respectable cobra undulation, this time fluttering his tongue so forcefully that the scent of automobile exhaust all but gagged him. The Royal Mail, barely glimpsed as snaggled teeth under the insignia of a peaked cap, shoved bag, Crowley and all back past the pillar-box’s safety cage and slammed the door.

The post bag collapsed slowly around his head. Buggery.

He assessed his position. The box was unlocked now, and theoretically he could nose it open – resume his human corporation –– reach into the bag – run like fuck – odds of managing without creating An Incident he'd have to explain Downstairs? – maybe not zero, but –

Voices filtered into his refuge. Apparently a police constable had taken an interest. ”Some bloody prank," the postman was explaining. "These young people. It’s the Welfare State, not enough for ’em to do...”

‘“Snake, eh?”

“Great black bugger. Eyes glowin,’ like. ‘E looked dangerous, mate, I ain’t lookin’ in again for any money.”

“Don’t. I’m calling the station. Though I’d probably be better calling the nephew if ‘e weren’t in school, got an American corn snake _and_ an iguana, in tanks, if you please. Keeps _him_ occupied.”

* * *

By half eight – as the conversation outside informed him – Crowley gathered that crime scene tape had been strung around the pillar box to make a perimeter, and that a succession of calls with the station via a nearby police box had yielded some sort of a strategy.

“Sergeant called the RSPCA – keep back, marm, thank you – and they gave ‘im the right about, we do puppies and kittens and bunny rabbits, ta very much, not buckin’ great snakes. There’s folk who’ll get a snake or that out’ve your back garden, but they’re out past Croydon, be hours getting in. Summun ended by callin’ the Zoo, seein’ as it sounds like an exotic. Might’ve escaped. Think that’s them now.”

There was the usual honking that accompanied anyone trying to stop a vehicle in London rush traffic, and a general bustle outside the box, courtesies exchanged, _he’s in ’ere, eh?_

“Probably not one’ve ours. People take a fancy to a special pet, impress the ladies, you never know, and they’ve got no idea how to look after it or secure it properly. You can count on it, we’ll find it got out of a flat somewhere hereabouts. I got called to one when I was still studying, popped its clogs in the drains and stopped up a whole block.”

Crowley found this revelation improving his mood not a whit.

“Just step back, if you would. They can move amazingly fast.”

The door of the box creaked open, and some implement prodded apart the mouth of the post bag. At a distance, Crowley detected a conversation which seemed to be the postman giving an interview to a junior reporter from the Mirror who'd been passing.

“He’s prob’ly’s scared of us as we are of him – but that’s what can make it dangerous – can’t see much, not like any species I know – no pits, but that’s not a guarantee – “

A long wand with a loop at the end threaded its way into the bag. “I’d just take the bag but – “

“Been over that. Mail tampering.”

“All right then, I should be able to get him in a couple of tries, bung him right in this cage. Easy-peasy, nothin’ like movin’ the python last week – “

Crap. He was clearly playing in the big leagues now. But his wits were also coming back. There was a way out. He poised himself, every sense on overdrive, and nudged his head out of the bag.

The loop swung toward him, he dodged, hit the pavement at lightspeed, and coiled around the pillar box, shooting through a knot of rubbernecking bystanders to transform in the space between their jammed-together shoes and an illegally parked Vauxhall. “Ow!” he shouted, rising with as conspicuous a commotion as he could manage. “Tripped, sorry – _what was_ that _bloody thing?”_

Everyone looked past him, scouring the pavement, the gauntleted and safety-vested functionary from the zoo swearing like an entire pub full of Irishmen; and then everyone froze.

He could stop _time,_ for fuck's sake. He'd never tried it as a snake, but now the trick worked elegantly, long enough to let him scramble under the yellow tape, grab the bag, seize the pale-cream linen envelope half dangling from its mouth, and scarper.

As he put the scene of his disgrace behind him, the beleaguered constable could be heard embarking on the thankless task of trying to clear the pavement of Regent Street during the tail of the morning rush.

* * *

The letter was burning a hole in his inside jacket pocket. But he had it, even though, with his true name appended to it, he couldn’t destroy it; it was going to be an unexploded shell in his life forever, dangerous in his own hands, more dangerous out of them.

He'd put it in the safe, with the Holy Water. Both material signs of his bond with the angel, both things that could demolish him if mishandled. Even drunk, _especially_ drunk, he knew not to go near that Thermos unless his back was to the wall. Best he could do.

Dumb would probably still find a way. There'd been the time he anonymously sent a bouquet round to A. Z. Fell's - camellias, hyacinths and maidenhair ferns: _I long for you, forgive me, I will keep our secret._ Thankfully he’d been drunk enough that the florist hadn't heard the name and address very clearly, and the most popular dancer in the club across the street – who went by the stage name of “Easy” – took back the boyfriend she’d dumped the week before. Just like today, fool's luck, close call...

“Crowley! Was that _you_ just now? I felt time go a bit off for a moment, like the Bastille -- ”

_I cannot recall an occasion when my heart leapt so wildly._ An entire succession of microclimates, from tropical to Antarctic, bloomed through Crowley’s corporation in expanding waves. By the time Aziraphale came abreast of him he’d mastered his face. Sort of.

“My word, you look dreadful. What are you doing out at this hour? I’ve never known you to – where are your _glasses_?”

He’d forgotten entirely about the glasses. Feeling his face as if they might be hiding somewhere on it regardless, he muttered “Lost ’em, I guess. Bad night.”

Aziraphale did grasp that sometimes he had _bad nights._

“Well, we can’t have that. My treat, here.” A discreet snap of upturned fingers, and a new pair was in the angel's hand. “What on earth happened? Come back to the shop and tell me.”

As if his last words to the demon hadn’t been _You go too fast for me, Crowley._

“And there’s this burnt bit on your jacket. Are you all right?”

“ ’m’ fine, angel. Just – temptation went sideways, kind’ve. One’ve the tough ones, you know how there’re some of ‘m I don’t like? Rather not talk about it.” The letter seemed to be crackling like a woodfire with every move of his hand as he raised the glasses to his face, shoved the bangs away from his eyes.

“Well, as you wish. I won’t pry. What if we at least get some coffee in you? There’s a lovely little place a block over. I could do with a scone myself.”

“Uh – ‘s’all right. S’pose you’ve got someplace to be.”

“Nonsense. Nothing that can’t wait, I really only fancied a bit of air… Maybe a turn in the Italian Gardens afterwards will do you good. I find the fountains so refreshing.”

“Don’t need to – ah – okay then.”

Aziraphale beaming was enough make his eyes sting with tears. Fortunately, he was wearing dark glasses again.

“Jolly good, then, we'll dare it. We – “ The blue eyes became thoughtful for a moment, as if Aziraphale were searching his expression, or maybe only for words.

“I realize I've been a bit -- abrupt in the past, Crowley. But the Arrangement still stands. When you _are_ willing to let me help out, you have only to ask. I know how it can be sometimes.”

The morning foot traffic flowed around them as if they were standing on a rock in a stream, in a bubble of their own, like history streaming past them, the only creatures in this world who could understand one another as they did. Maybe that was enough. It would have to be.

Crowley spoke before the silence could draw out.

“Sure. Just not _this_ time. Some things I can’t put on you, 's'okay.”

He shoved his hands into his pockets, fell into step: _Just a demon swaggering down the pavement, yep, nothing touches Anthony J. Crowley, chiller than Hell itself, me_.

_You don’t know, angel. You never will._

_finis_

**Author's Note:**

> Regent Street marks the dividing line between Mayfair and Soho, and I've come to think of it as the DMZ between Aziraphale's and Crowley's turf.
> 
> Author once had a client who was a curator of reptiles at the Smithsonian's National Zoo, and told tales of being called to take charge of assorted exotic snakes seized from sketchy pet stores and collectors.
> 
> All howlers about London institutions of the late Sixties are my own fault, though I did my best, all praise to Wikipedia and stock photos. However, the pillar box outside the Oxford Circus Tube station is not double entry. It just sounded so rude I couldn't resist.
> 
> If you liked, share, reblog, comment! Come heckle me on Tumblr @CopperPlateBeech


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